@ Mike

Ha, yes it all happened and was over before I even decided to go shopping. My part of town was relatively untouched, just a little pea-size hail is all. The movie theater that got damaged you might see in pictures/video was the one I went to see the new Star Trek just yesterday. The intersection just up the street where the medical building and every building there got destroyed, I drove through leaving the theater to get on I-35. I live on the far west-north part of town (Bethany) where we almost never get tornadoes. Not sure why, but they always go through South Oklahoma City - Moore area or North Oklahoma City - Edmond area, but never through the core of the city.

It might sound odd, but I feel rather safe living here and I would choose tornadoes over wild fires, earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes ANY day. Tornadoes are surgical storms and the chances of you being affected by one are exceptionally small. One of my friends lives less than a mile from the tornado devastation path and his house has zero damage, he even has full utility service. That's how surgical they are. Other natural disasters are grander in scope and occur with almost the same frequency as tornado season anyway. How many hurricanes are there per year that do damage? If you live in Florida you are guaranteed to be affected by a hurricane at some point. California, earthquake same story. I've lived in OKC for 31 years now and I've only had to take shelter from a possible tornado hit once and it ended up being miles away and my parents were being over cautious (rightly so) and got us in our underground storm shelter.

Getting back to the car, I'm not sure what I want to do with the Prius situation. The 2013 is the last of this generation with the 2014 being all new and supposedly much better. If the concept is anywhere near the production, sign me up for a 4th gen Prius. Thinking back on my inspection and test drive tonight, there are just too many little things I don't like enough about the current 3rd gen Prius. There is the bridged console that I loathe, the ancient appearing HVAC LCD screen, the dated touch panel and overly busy main display (speedo/etc). The exterior looks 'good enough' but isn't quite what I had hoped to end up with. I wanted something interesting and different from what I had, and it is, but it isn't quite what I had in mind. The concept 2014 Prius is startlingly good. Gimme!







and the interior which will probably look NOTHING like this:



So running the numbers, the only car that I can buy and get enough gas mileage to almost negate gas cost enough to where I'm almost paying for just the car (as I would have the Leaf) is the Prius, especially if the 60mpg combined EPA guess is right for the 4th gen. A 2013 Prius II (base trim) still has smart key and push button start and some niceties so it's not completely stripped. If the 4th gen keeps similar pricing a 2014 Prius II would run me about $2800 per year (including everything but insurance) if I kept it for 10 years. At that point the car is worth about $8000-10000 meaning my true cost if I were to sell it then would be about $1800-2000 per year. Sounds pretty good to me.

I don't really want to pay taxes on a 2013 only to buy a 2014 sometime next year (supposed to be delayed a bit) and have to pay another $900 in TTL. Looking like the Pontiac will have to do for 1 more year. Joy...